AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Great Yarmouth: Why It Happens and How to Avoid It
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your motor and your ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. Normally, when your motor has not turned, it's drained and thoroughly purged where the vehicle is in Great Yarmouth. If you're reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it takes place and how to make sure it does not.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
No single fluid but two: that's how many modern diesels near Great Yarmouth and Newtown run, with diesel for the motor. AdBlue's own tank keeps it, and from there it goes to the exhaust, and there spraying cleans the gas.
There's a filler for each tank. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the layout on a lot of motors. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler sits beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. Filling your diesel side at the pump happens constantly. Far less commonly, the AdBlue side gets filled — normally from a bottle, by someone working out where it goes. It's in the gap that the error happens.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank take place around Great Yarmouth?
Carelessness rarely explains it. What does is three things lining up together.
Haste follows from the warning. Your car tells you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank puts the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up happens quickly, before work on a drive off Market Gates, or heading home in the car park outside The Feathers.
Then your car is strange. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
A spout-topped bottle meets no resistance at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. And so the pour, once begun, carries on. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Great Yarmouth or out in Cobholm Island.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Be it a Great Yarmouth forecourt or a drive over in Southtown, spend a few seconds over these before any is poured in.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is often blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap normally isn't. Read it rather than going by where it sits.
- The size. On plenty of vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Plenty of motors say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler is not by your diesel cap, it is in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you collect a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at the nearest station.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
When the light goes on, wherever around Norfolk, use this routine.
- Not in a rush on the side of Theatre Plain, not on a slope, not with your motor running: park then switch off first.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once finding the AdBlue filler and read it. Daft, perhaps, but it does the trick.
- The diesel cap remains on. Where both share a flap, confirm it's closed before the bottle comes up.
- Stop when your tank is topped up or the bottle is empty; until then, tip gently using the built-in spout.
- Only then, start the car: close the cap, check a second time, and make sure your diesel cap was never opened.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Stage five stays off limits.
Already put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Great Yarmouth?
Brief list, then. Top of that: your motor stays off. Keep your ignition off too, since on many diesels it by itself starts your fuel pump. Filling up with diesel will not thin it: instead, AdBlue drops to the bottom of that tank, right where the fuel is taken from.
If you're at a forecourt, whether it's the Shell or the Asda, ask the attendants to help push your car away from the petrol pump. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway around Great Yarmouth.
Already run? Stop when it is safe, then switch off. The next exit means the place to leave if you're on the M11, over 50 miles from Great Yarmouth. A short hop across Great Yarmouth is a smaller job than a run towards Norwich, under 25 miles away, so tell us about how far it went.
Great Yarmouth: what occurs when we get there
We come to the car wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside St Nicholas Priory CofE VA Primary School and Nursery, close to Covered Market or on your own driveway. Those replies determine this work and the price, so our engineers ask what went in, roughly how much, and if it's run. That quote is given on the call, ahead of any van leaving.
Next: a drain, then a full flush of the whole system. Not like petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and none of it washes away by itself. That is why it counts more. A test is last: before that, clean diesel is added, and the fuel filter is cleaned or changed as needed. We don't leave until it has been started and is running correctly.
Most jobs are done in about half an hour once we get there, as long as the motor has not run — and the pumps we use are safe on a busy forecourt yet quiet at night outside a house. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Misfuelling cover is part of many insurance policies — so use the wait to look at yours.
About Great Yarmouth, briefly
Great Yarmouth is a coastal town in Norfolk, situated on the eastern coast of England, with a low elevation of around 7 metres above sea level. Great Yarmouth lies near the towns of Runham and Runham Vauxhall, and is close to Cobholm Island. Great Yarmouth has a mix of housing types, but is predominantly characterised by terraced housing. Great Yarmouth is located approximately 18 miles from Norwich and 109 miles from London.
AdBlue drains across Norfolk, Great Yarmouth included
Great Yarmouth is a coastal town, and our teams that cover it also work the places around it, Runham and Runham Vauxhall among them, across the NR postcode area. Give a postcode beginning NR30 1, and the van arrives quickest.
There's no need to shift your car. Anywhere it sits — beside Market Gates Shopping Centre, in a layby heading to Saint George's Park, on a drive — that's where it gets cleared. If you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Friends Meeting House, ring and ask instead of guessing.
For Great Yarmouth drivers, the short version
Tip no AdBlue until you've read the cap. AdBlue in your diesel tank after all? Keep the car off and phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, across Norfolk.